Often situations arise in which an owner of an asset, such as a automobile, wishes to confirm the location of the asset when the asset is out of the owner's control. For example, when a parent allows a teenage son or daughter to take the family car for an outing, the parent may wish to verify the location of the car at any time during the outing. As another example, a business entity operating a fleet of vehicles may wish to monitor the location of each of the vehicles during the course of business operations. As a further example, the owner of a stolen vehicle may wish to monitor the location of the vehicle and provide law enforcement officers such information to aid in recovery of the vehicle.
What is needed, therefore, is a system capable of determining the location of an asset in real-time, or near real-time, and reporting the location information to the owner of the asset or to another who is authorized to receive such information.